No holiday for Trump administration lawyers trying to find way around Supreme Court ruling on census

There was no holiday break for Trump administration officials trying to find a way around court rulings barring the addition of a citizenship question to the 2020 census.

“So important for our Country that the very simple and basic ‘Are you a Citizen of the United States?’ question be allowed to be asked in the 2020 Census,” President Trump tweeted in his first words to the nation on Independence Day.

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“Department of Commerce and the Department of Justice are working very hard on this, even on the 4th of July!”

On the heels of losing a Supreme Court case over the inclusion of a citizenship question on census forms, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross announced Tuesday hat the “Census Bureau has started the process of printing the decennial questionnaires without the question.”

But Trump tweeted on Wednesday morning that accurate news reports of Ross’ statement were “fake news.”

Another Justice Department lawyer on a conference call with Hazel was perplexed by the backtracking and added that the $114 million printing process is “continuing... without a citizenship question, and that process has not stopped.”

Critics say the citizenship question is meant to intimidate immigrants and is a backdoor way of boosting Republican political influence.

Donald Trump in the White House

The Supreme Court last week blocked the census from including the question. The majority opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts said the government’s reason for including the citizenship question "seems to have been contrived.”

The census helps determine how congressional seats are distributed and how federal funding is distributed. The U.S. Constitution says the census must be conducted every 10 years. Under federal law, the 2020 census is to take place April 1.